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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE SYNTHESIS AND ANALYSIS OF THE 
POETRY OF 

Sidney Lanier 



BY 



CHARLES GHAUNCEY CARROLL 



DEDICATED 

TO 

MY WIFE 



''By the more height of thy szveet stature grown. 

Twice eyed with thy 'dear' vision set in mine, 
I ken far lands to ivifeless men unknown, 

I compass stars for one-scxed eyes too fine. 
No text on sea-horizons cloudily zvrit. 

No maxim vaguely starred in fields or skies, 
But this zvise thou-in-me deciphers it : 

Oh, thou'rt the Height of heights, the Bye of eyes. 



Price 25 Cents 



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COPYRIGHTED IQIO 
BY 

C. C. CARROLL 

OWENS BORQjJKY, 



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1 

^\ r 

^ u^^EN years ago an effort to read and appreciate 
^£ LI^ Sidney Lanier*s poems was not crowned with suc- 
^^ cess for I went to him in an immature spirit. Then» 

too, I failed to find just what I had expected having pre- 
conceived another poetry. Several of the smaller pro- 
ductions appealed with rather a peculiar lyric sweetness 
but for real inspiration and genuine metric pleasure only 
a disappointment was in store. Yet all the time there 
was a haunting sense of wanting to know Lanier. Re- 
cently a friend gave me that best of all gifts a book and 
that book happened to be a new edition of Lanier*s poems. 
Casually I opened my treasure and ere long the melody 
began to enter my soul: 

''As some dim blur of distant music nears 
The long-desiring sense, and slowly clears 
To forms of time and apprehensive tune, 
So, as I lay, fidl soon 
Interpretation throve :" 

Keats never looked into Chapman's Homer with such 
surprise, delight and ecstacy. What I had merely deemed 
the Song of The Chattahoochee turned out to be a warm 
gulf stream constituting one of the profoundest ocean- 
currents of harmony. I tried to measure the music for a 
time but at last when in the lark-song in the Psalm of 



The Poetry of 



The West — a lark whose name would have been David 
had Lanier followed out his system of nomenclature — a 
song which all the time seemed to be the apotheosis of 
Browning's ''Saul" — I tried to mount with him to that 
exaltation where 

"With a univcrsc-lovc he zvas hot in the wings, 
And the sun stretched beams to the ivorlds as the 

shining strings 
Of the large hid harp that sounds zvhen an all-lover 

sings; 
And the sky's blue traction prevailed o'er the earth's 

in might, 
And the passion of flight grew mad zvith the glory of 

height 
And the tittering of song was like the giving of 

light—" 

I realized the boundless and soul-stirring symphony of a 
master, and applied to him his own words in Corn: 

"Soul filled like thy long veins with sweetness tense, 

By every godlike sensCy 
Transmuted from the four wild elements. 

Drawn to high plans. 
Than liffst more stature than a mortal man's — " 

There began to dawn upon me the conviction that in this 
Georgia poet might be the culmination so far of American 
song and an insatiable desire to know more of him and 
his music took possession of me. And I believe his 
"Trembling song" the "Gray and sober dove'* is begin- 
ning to descend upon the people as their zeit-geist and 
there is a chrism in its descent. 



Sidney Lanikr 



"For one star differeth from another star in glory — " 

^^HERE have been at least three southern singers 
Lll whose sustained flights of song will compel the final 
recognition from the world due to the masters. The 
first of these, Edgar Allen Poe, is coming into his own 
for the year which gave Lincoln, Beethoven and Darwin 
to the world is equally to be honored in its centenary as 
the birth year of Poe. From the crucial test of time he 
has come forth with the mark of genius adorning his brow 
and his name illuminant with fame. The years have mere- 
ly brought recognition of merit. The second of the three. 
Father Ryan, has by his sweet persuasive soul and sancti- 
ty of spirit won a place in the Choir Invisible of American 
singers. So subtle, so exquisite is his singing however, 
many have, in the more blatant claims of others, failed 
in the refinement of ear essential to hearing it. Then too, 
he expressed himself almost exclusively in the terms of the 
Confederacy and the vocabulary of Catholic dogmas, so 
the prejudiced turned away. His was a deathless sing- 
ing neverthelss for a soul saturate with the solemn 
sweetness of piety and resignation voiced itself in the songs 
of the Mystic. The last of the three is Sidney Lanier, 
"The flute-voice in the world of tone;" Lanier, the refiner 
of melody and painter of the lilies' matchless hue. 



The Poetry o^ 



He is the greatest of the three but a brief prolegomen- 
ary comparison is not out of place since there is such a 
marked coincidence in quality, motif, versification source 
of inspiration and power of expression. The comparison 
can do no harm nor injustice to any one of the three and 
what contrasts may appear but enhance the beauty of in- 
dividuality. With Poe, poetry was a passion, with Ryan, 
the compulsuon of a heart from whose abundance of 
saintly sweetness the mouth must needs speak, but with 
Lanier it was the deliberate, though long-delayed, re-\ 
sponse to a "high calling" and the assumption to the j 
exclusion of all else of a work of giving expression to a I 
God-given voice. His poems are ablush with beauty, the ■ 
dew of Nature's eternal youth is upon them, they gleam 
with light and are rapt with sound. Eurythmic in the^ 
extreme each one of them is a call to his fellow man. 

^' Still shalt thou type the poet-soul sublime 
That leads the vanivard of his timid time 
And sings up cozvards with commanding rhymes" — 

All three had a soul-longing to crystallize thoughts 
into words and all voiced a similar feeling of inability to 
do so to the fullest. Poe, who as he writes 

''Denied that ever 
A thought arose zvithin the human brain 



had 



Beyond the utterance of the human tongue 



''Stirred from out the abysses of his heart 
Unthought-like thoughts that are the soids of thoughts, 



Sidney Lanier 



Richer, far under, far diviner visions 

Than even the Seraph harper, Israfel, 

{Who has the szveetest voice of all God's creatures) 

Could hope to utter/' 

Ryan, dreaming his songs in the hush of silence con- 
fessed : 

''But far on the deep there are billozvs 
That never shall break on the beach ; 
And I have heard songs in the silence 
That never shall float into speech; 
And I have had dreams in the valley 
Too lofty for language to reach" 

The unsatisfied soul of Lanier sent, like a dove o'er the 
modern waste finding no place for the sole of her foot, his 
matchless urge and yearn, 

"Music is love in search of a word/' 

This does not mean these poets could not sing nor is it a 
confession of failure; the thought is unthinkable in the 
light of what they published. I could fancy the very 
vagitus of each was music, but it meant a recognition on 
their part that a fuller knowledge of God would put a 
new song in their mouths. They were dreamers of 
thoughts that 

"Passed through the valley like virgins 
Too pure for the touch of a word." . 

Yet three more chaste poets never sung. The written 
records of each can be searched in vain for one unclean. 



Thk Poetry of 



impure, word or thought. No evil communications pra- 
ceeded out of their mouths; no salacious suggestions ap- 
peared in their singing; no limose language defiled their 
productions. The raiment with which they clothed their 
poetic conceptions was white and clean and the draperies 
they drew about their thoughts were not scorched "Nor 
the smell of fire had passed on them.** 
I None of these singers sought the mountain crests for 
/ their rhapsodies but found them in the lowlands ; in those 
) slopes leading down to the sea and up to God. Poe 
' roamed through his "Alley titanic of cypress** ; Ryan 
loved to "Walk down the valley of silence'* and Lanier 
delighted 

"To loiter doivn lone alleys of delight, 
And hear the heating of the hearts of trees — ''. 

These men could appreciate Gethsemane and walk se- 
I curely in the valley of the shadow of Death. ^ Of the 
three undoubtedly Poe peopled the darkness most with 
terrors. To him "The ghoul-haunted woodlands of Weir" 
could leave his heart "ashen and sober** but it could not 
banish him from 

"The skies that angels trod 
Where deep thoughts are a duty:' 

« 

Ryan found in "The mystic gloom** of the old trees a 
resting place for the Southern dead and called upon them 
to stand guard over their sacred trust. Lanier found in 
the shadows of the woods "Gospelling glooms**. They 



Sidney Lanier 



voiced that spirit of the South which **is chastened, and 
not killed, sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet 
making many rich** — O South, "Their mouths were 
opened unto you, their hearts enlarged!** 

The superiority of Lanier lies in his upper flight and 
in his definite work as a light-giver. He was uncontent 
to remain with Poe in the mere passion of poetry; un- 
willing even like Ryan to perpetuate in his measures the 
sacred dead of his own Lost Cause. ' Not that he failed 
to appreciate the part the past plays in the future, for his 
soul could respond to the plaint for Lenore and Ryan's 
poet of the Confederacy expressed in Sentinel Songs: 

"The fallen cause still waits — 
Its hard has not come yet 
His Sim through one of tomorronfs gates 
Shall shine hut never set — " 

But when he comes he'll sweep 

A harp zvith tears all stringed 

And the very notes he strikes ivill weep 

As they come from his hand zvoe-zvinged. 

Ah! grand shall be his strain 

And his songs zvill fill all climes 

And the rehcls shall rise and march again 

Dozvn the lines of his glorious rhymes'' — 

would have found in him an earnest listener but his harp 
was tuned to more than memorial music. He is the poet 
of the dawn and sings of the perfect day. The finality 
of Tiis work impresses him and his singing is cumulative, 
appropriating all he meets. This as much as anything 
else places him in a higher realm than his companions. 



10 The Poetry of 



In him there must dwell the fullness of the marsh and 
the sea and when "The tide is in his ecstacy," his soul is 
commensurate. He drank the sea, encompassed it and 
the "vast sweet visage of space" he was eager to meet. 
Their extrinsic vastness met in him an intrinsic deep suf- 
ficient. 

''Holding the hills and heavens in my heart 
For contemplation' 

expresses the meaning. In other words he is an "All- 
lover" and is all-comprehensive. 



Sidney Lanier 11 



Olljaptpr ®mn 



"Before ever the mountains were brought forth, or ever 
thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from ever- 
lasting to everlasting 

Thou art God." 

A MAN is great according to his relationship to God. // 
A love of nature as God*s handiwork is an element ) 
of greatness. Lanier's love of nature followed a^ 
j definite channel predicating his love for man on his love 
for Christ and his love for nature on his love for man. 



4' 



"A sweet Voice, 'Love thy neighbor' said; 
Then first the hounds of neighborhood outspread 
Beyond all confines of old ethnic dread. 
Vainly the Jew might zvag his covenant head : 
'All men are neighbors , so the sweet Voice said. 
So, when man's arms had circled all man's race, 
The liberal compass of his zvarm embrace 
Stretched bigger yet in the dark hounds of space; 
With hands agrope he felt smooth Nature s grace, 
Drew her to breast and kissed her szveetheart face : 
Yea man found neighbors in great hills and trees 
And streams and clouds and suns and birds and bees 
And throbbed with neighbor love in loving these." 

No taint of pantheism mars this love of nature, no 
confusion of God with His handiwork and no con- 
fusion of God with man. He was a greater dem- 
ocrat than Whitman because his democracy was based 
on a higher law than egoism. He was a greater lover of 



12 Thk Poetry of 



nature than Emerson and holds a grander message be- 
cause there is no tinge of transcendentalism in his homage. 
Any thetic discussion of him must be couched largely 
in scriptural phraseology for his writings are a saturate 
solution of the doctrines of Holy Writ; full of God's love 
and light with practically every line holding the crystal- 
ization of some sacred sermon. He did not use an ecclesi- 
astical vocabulary nor a dogmatic nomenclature, the letter 
might have killed, but the spirit giveth life to all his poems. 
As has been said his was a "high calling" and he knew 
he was no accident. A destiny was given unto him and 
he longed with the desire of Paul to finish his course even 
though like him he knew bonds and afflictions of physical 
suffering awaited him in every city. He was a prophet 
and the coal from the altar burning his lips made him a 
precisian in the form of his utterance. ' To him an error\ 
in metre was a distinct loss in the ultimate of his work.! 
He recognized the debt completion owes to adherence to 
law. No man had a greater spirit of freedom than he and 
no man clung closer to freedom within the law. He was 
no wandering star for whom is deserved the blackness of 
darkness forever but a fixed planet owning allegiance to 
the sun and swinging through his appointed sphere, be- 
longing to the 

"Sweet seers, and stellar visionaries, all 
That brood about the skies of poesy" — 

As such he was a lover of his peers. He drank pro- 
foundly from all poets and musicians, holding them in his 



Sidney Lanier 13 



heart, translating them in the alembic of his soul to manna, 
by a reverse transubstantiation changing them into bread. 
They live and sing again in his hesperid songs of the new 
^ world. They speak to him from every phase of nature. 
The Florida palmetto becomes a Dante standing in the 
purgatorial sands; the mocking bird a trim Shakespeare 
on the tree ; Clover is a galaxy of literary stars ; the rest- 
less sea a Caliban ; the night Cleopatra drinking the melt- 
ing sun in the red vintage of the sea ; a Georgia hill with 
its field gone to waste, a hairy Lear; the morn Desde- 
mona ; the night the Moor. 

Lanier uses no mythological references. For him it 
would have been idolatry. He shunned as false and 
would have nothing to do with the "proxy fays, false 
fauns and rascal gods that stole Nature's praise away". 
With him "In the beginning was the Word, and the 
Word was with God and the Word was God. The same 
was in the beginning with God. All things were made 
by Him; and without him was not anything made that 
was made." His prehension of this truth is one of the 
strongest guarantees of his permancy as a poet. Every 
shrub was a preacher of righteousness to him because it 
was an exponent of beauty and his sheer appreciation of 
its euphrasy bestowed upon him a preachership to his 
fellow men. He might have begun his living epistles: 
Sidney Lanier, bond-servant to the divine Logos and 
called to be an apostle of the musical gospel composed in 
his handiwork. His bishopric let none other take! He 
had a prosilient mind for every secret of Nature and to 



14 The Poetry oe 



him were the revelations of the wood and the mysteries 
of the marsh. Its queachy bottom was nought to him for 
he imitated the feet of his Lord and let his spirit walk the 
waters. TTie marsh was his university and the hederose 
oaks festooned with their aged beards of moss were his 
professors dispensing knowledge to his quesitive spirit. 
One of his parismatic queries 

'What logic of greeting lies 
Betwixt dear over-heautiful trees and the rain of the 
eyes?'^ 

is indicative of his research. The track of a marsh hen 
was a postil of large explanation of the marsh. Whether 
in the sunset or dawn he gained understanding that Q. E. 
D. of knowledge. He left the tide-filled marsh with the 
whole sea surging in his portative soul ; for 



'Oh, is it not to zviden man 
Stretches the sea?" 



and sought the marsh for the exultant potentiation from 
the sun. Where the water hyacinths formed a pontoon 
bridge for the spider's web betrayed by night's moisture- 
lading he was enabled to see 

"Now in each pettiest personal sphere of dew 
The summ'd morn shines as in the blue 
Big dezv-drop of all heaven — " 

He anticipated the dawn to gratify his taste as connois- 
seur of wildwood psalmody and take precedence of the 



Sidney Lanier 15 



bee as praegustator at every flowery chalice. He was no 
nature-faker of the forest nor quidnunc of the swamp but 
learned in their true lore. No alma mater ever had more 
honoring child to rise up and call her blessed. He was 
practician of her poet's art and master of her symphonies. 
He was initiated into Nature's state secrets not as a silent- 
iary at her courts but rather that he might be her am- 
bassador to the money-lustful world; one of the chosen 
whose knowledge of Christ in nature gives him the ministry 
of reconciliation. Nature was his insistent teacher inces- 
santly calling him to school. As he puts it 

/'The little green leaves zvould not let me alone 
in my sleep." 

He learned to translate the unknown tongues to the world 
and in his magic diction was promised 

"Green rests for Trade's hlood-shotten eyes, 
For o'er-heat brains surcease, 
For love the dear zvoods sympathies 
For Grief the zvise zvoods peace — '" 

He lectured at John's44opkins University. Would that 
he had founded a chair of Nature's philosophies and en- 
dowed it with the treasury of his wisdom. 



16 The Poetry of 



Olliaptpr ^i^tn 



'And He saith unto me, Seal not the sayings of the prophecy 
of this book — " 



JTk EEPLY as Lanier drank from Nature the draughts 
XLB were no more profound than the ones quaffed from 
the pages of the Bible, that other book which is our 
schoolmaster leading us to Christ. Prophet, priest and 
apostle *'lend large" to him. He quotes their doctrines 
even when avoiding their verbiage. Moses, Isaiah, James, 
Jude and Paul and above all Christ shine out in his lines. 
Moses told of the making of man and Lanier named 
America the tall Adam of lands with Freedom for his 
Eve. Isaiah had his trees of the field clapping their hands 
and Lanier has them holding up their invocatory palms in 
myriad prayer. James wrote of the man whose faith 
wavered being like the wave of the sea driven by the wind 
and tossed and Lanier says "Once more the wave doth 
never good nor ill". Jude speaks of the raging waves 
of the sea foaming out their own shame and Lanier writes 
"But ever the idiot sea-mouths foam and fill". Thus 
could instances be multiplied but exemplification and not 
amplification is sufficient. 

It is worthy of note in fact of profound observation 
that while Lanier does not use the verbiage of scripture 
that he does use in addition to the poetic conceptions of 



Sidney Lanier 17 



the Bible practically every one of the great doctrines of 
the Word of God. 

Lanier believed in the blessedness of the nation whose 

/God is the Lord and with the vision of a seer sighted the 

/ one colossal idolatry of the latter day world, Mammon 

'worship. Here he is most like Christ in his conception of 

the money worship which is the caries of the application 

of the golden rule and the royal law and the filth-birth of 

Trade's ignoble uses. Here he finds the foe of the home, 

the oppressor of the poor, the defiler of marriage sanctity 

and the debaucher of manhood. 



''For O my God! and my God! 
What shameful zcays have zvomen trod 
At beckoning of Trade's golden rod! 
Alas zvhen sighs are traders' lies 
And hearfs-ease eyes and violet eyes 

A re m erchandise ! 
purchased lips that kiss with pain! 
O cheeks coin-spotted zvith smirch and stain! 
O trafficked hearts that break in tzvain!" 

With Lanier the poor would have the gospel preached 
unto them but their oppression never ceases with Trade: 

''But Oh, the poor! the poor! the poor! 
That stand by the inzvard opening door 
Trade s hand doth tighten evermore^ 
And sigh their monstrous foul-air sigh 
For outside hills of liberty, 
Where Nature spreads her zvild blue sky 
For Art to make into melody!" 

Again comes the music calling into action the spirit 



18 The Poetry of 



of manhood against the gelt-geist of commerciaHsm which 
with its "Night-philosophy hoots at pain*' : 

''Is Honor gone into his grave f 
Hath Faith become a catiff knave, 
And Selfhood turned into a slave 
To work in Mammon's cave, 
Pair Lady? 

"Will Truth's long blade ne'er gleam again? 
Hath Giant Trade in dungeons slain 
All great contempts of mean-got gain 
And hates of inzvard stain, 
Fair Lady? 

''For aye shall name and fame be sold, 
And place be hugged for the sake of gold, 
And smirch-robed justice feebly scold 
At crime all money-bold. 
Fair Lady?" 

Over thirty years ago this symphony sounded from 
Bahimore and in the Hght of the moral issues of the day 
who can deny foresight to this seer and the oracles of God 
in his song? 



Sidney Lanier 19 



"And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of 
my flesh — " 

«%t||tITH the homage Lanier paid to all true poets and 
lipl musicians; the reverence he offered to Nature; 
the devotion he applied to scripture and the wor- 
ship he placed on the altar of God, there should rank the 
love he had for his wife. To him she was the inspiration 
of his genius. He acknowledged her in at least ten of his 
choicest poems. His was the true ideal of the marriage 
state, expressed as largely and in the same spirit and 
human relationship as the simple but sublime statement 
of Jesus Christ when in speaking of divorce He chastely 
said, **Have ye not read that he which made them at the 
beginning made them male and female, and said for this 
cause shall a man leave his father and mother and shall 
cleave to his wife; and they twain shall be one flesh? 
Wherefore they are no more twain but one flesh. What 
therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asun- 
der." To Lanier his wife was his helpmeet and com- 
panion. "Wife- love flies level, his dear mate to seek" 
with him. The modern use of the word mate, carrying 
with it a kind of ape-eveloved super-animal pairing, an 
exalted cave dweller's conjugality, would have been 
loathsome to him. There could never have been a time 



20 The Poetry oi^ 



in the past eternity when his wife could have been tn 
common ancestry with an anthropoid ape. He who 
shunned the "rascal gods" of the Greeks would surely 
turn away from a modern rehabilitation of their lutarious 
philosophy. To him the Edenic eclosion of Eve from 
man*s side under the power of God, was a divine birth 
and his Adam could never have found in any evolution 
of the beasts of the field, a wife. Nay Lanier's wife 
was both inspiration and vision to him : 

"By the more height of thy szveet stature grotvn, 

Tivice eyed with thy gray vision set in mine, 
I ken far lands to zvifeless men unknozvii, 

I compass stars for one-sexed eyes too fine. 
No text on sea-horizons cloudily writ, 

No maxim vaguely starred in fields or skies, 
But this zvise thou-in-me deciphers it: 

Oh, thou'rt the Height of heights, the Bye of eyesf 

With him "When life's all love, 'tis life: aught else 'tis 
naught." The temptation is almost irresistible to quote 
in full the exquisite sweetness of "My Springs," where, 
Love, Faith, Charity, Hope, Art and Attainment dwell 
in ever-living power. Happy the man who in his wife's 
eyes can find the well springs of eternal truth. 

"Oval and large and passion-pure, 
And gray and zvisc and honor-sure; 
Soft as a dying violet's breath — 
Yet calmly unafraid of death;" — 

Let not the divorcee enter this holy place; let not that 
psuedo-artist whose unsightly soul would sordidly seek its 
own selfishness or else befoul and unhallow some home 



Sidney Lanier 21 



with that artistic temperament which deems itself ham- 
pered in its expression by wife and babes but freed to a 
transgression of the seventh commandment; let not that 
adulterous barter and trade of womanhood for wealth, title 
or social position enter here for this is holy ground. Shrink 
back from this sacred light lest your evil be reproved. Let 
all scepticism as to married happiness, all jest and mockery 
of conjugal sanctity, all unclean life and impure thought, 
all flippant, painted lips, hard eyes, drawn cheeks, all 
childless marriages, loveless unions, pleasures of sin for 
a season, aye let them all without the gates when the 
flame of life burns low and the gray shadows draw close, 
let them all see this perfect love that casts out all fear and 
know "they entered not in because of unbelief." Let 
fallen womanhood unbind her locks and wipe away her 
tears; let silent, guilty manhood pass on in its own con- 
dem.nation. The painter Romney Vv^ho at nineteen left 
his wife because he thought she hindered his genius and 
who crept back, poor, aged, sick and wretched to be 
nursed by her until he died might have wept tears of blood 
could he have seen the lines quoted. Thou, the true 
poet, O Lanier, for unto thine own wife and her alone 
is poured the precious oitnment from the alabastar vase 
of thy true soul ! Thou shalt rise up in condemnation of 
this wicked and perverse generation. From Keats' Induc- 
tion to a Poem there comes a thought for this gentle 
knight ; 

''Lo, I must tell a tale of chivalry; 
For large zvhite plumes are dancing in mine eye," 



22 Th^ Poetry of 



This husband love and wife love was "Star-consummatt, 
rose complete" and was "As if a rose might somehow be 
a throat* and that throat singing to flute and violin accom- 
panying. It is in the violin thought the unity is best ex- 
pressed : 

"So one in heart and thought, I trozv 
That thou might' st press the strings and I might 

drazv the bow 
And both ivoiild meet in music sweet, 
Thou and I, I trow." 



Sidney Lanier 23 



Oltjapter 3Fttt? 



"I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how I am straitened 
till it be accomplished!" 



yyrHE loneliness of great men is proverbial and is 
^fl mostly resultant from the lack of appreciation of 
those with whom they are closely associated. A 
general expression of it has been given by Jesus in the 
words; **No prophet is without honor save in his own 
country,** but even this is only temporal though frequently 
its projection extends into the years immediately succeed- 
ing death. **Ye build the sepulchres of the prophets and 
your fathers killed them** — is generally the result how- 
ever of a prophet*s life. The building of sepulchres or 
the garnishment of sepulchres referred to by Jesus was in 
a double spirit, i. e., a cessation of enmity against the dead 
and indirectly a belittlement of any living prophet who 
might dare to speak in opposition to the powers that be. 
Who need envy the dead especially when in praising 
them there can be an impressive holding to the form of 
Godliness while denying its power. Sometimes however 
monuments may be a genuine display of acknowledgment 
of power. "Ye asked for bread and they gi* ye a stane** 
is not always the sole analysis of popular motive in the 
erection of memorial tablet or marble cenotaph, though 
Burns' mother voices the sentiment, for sometimes they 



24 The: Poetry of^ 



mean a growth of the people to the measure, partially at 
least, of the poet's message. Monuments however are of 
no tem}>oral value to the dead and are not erected to the 
living except they build their own and then the help is in 
the building and the joy in the clean pleasure of edifica- 
tion. Again let the poet receive the application of his 
own verse and let us say to him, as though he were alive 
and building, thou 

''Stand est in thy future grave, 
Serene and brave, 
With unremitting breath 
Inhaling life from death. 
Thine epitaph zvrit fair in fruitage eloquent, 
Thyself thy monument:' 

Loneliness seems to be one of the penalties to greatness 
and has so far had the power to wring some sort of a cry 
from all the great, whether that cry be expressed in the 
sarcasm of Diogenes, the bitterness of Byron, the pathos 
of Shakespeare or that gentles and tenderest reproach it 
ever offered to humanity in the words of the Christ: 
**Could ye not watch with me one hour?** Lanier knew 
this longmg for human sympathy and had all the isolation 
of grief. He suffered keenly as all great minds must 
suffer from ignorant and malicious criticism: He had 
the consciousness of his own greatness. Both combined 
in their attack against this soul so sensitive the breath of 
a breeze could compel its music. His lines **To Our 
Mocking Bird'* suggest his sense of injury under the port- 
caustic of criticism assuming the shape of death: 



Sidney Lanier 25 



''Ah, though never an ear for song, thou hast 
A tireless tooth for songsters — " 

In "Remonstrance" he gives vent to righteous indignation. 
It is a less-hoIy imitation or rather echo of the "Why 
smitest thou me?** But even righteous indignation gives 
way before the weaker of the didymi sleep and death 
and he lets not the sun go down on his wrath. 

''Over the huge and huddling sea, 

Over the Caliban sea. 
Bring hither my brother Antonio, — Man, — 
My injurer : Night breaks the ban : 

Brother, I pardon thee." 

There is an egoism in American poetry, finding for 
its chiefest exponent Walt Whitman, based on transcen- 
dentalism, supported by the doctrines of ultra-evolution- 
ism, tending toward pantheism, which has laid claim to 
being exponent of American Democracy. Its chief singer, 
equally at home according to his doctrines as chanter of 
the progress of eons and as bard of the gutters, sang 
God and man to the same measure showing a preference 
for neither and disowning moral responsibility to God 
for sin, promised somewhere in some vague way an ever 
upward growth.: A kind of an oriental, soul-transmigra- 
tory theory sans any danger toward atavism. Calmly, 
almost insolently, singing a song of "Myself" this muse 
promises to all "lesser breeds" the hope of some time 
being as big as he, and tells them not worry over such 
minor things as Heaven, Hell, God or Eternity but just 
"loaf" on and "invite your soul" — This philosophy dis- 



26 The Poetry of 



claims any loneliness and is not straitened until any bap- 
tism where with it must be baptized for the uplift of the 
race is accomplished. Claiming an origin greater than 
revelation's showing forth of mysteries, a destiny higher 
than Heaven, a vesture more resplendent than an angel's 
of light, it passes from egoism to egotism and deblaterates 
forth its own claims until half the literary world today 
deems it divine. It is really nothing more than an Amer- 
icanized Jainism and receives a just rebuke in "The Crys- 
tal" where Lanier recognizing the beauty of the singers of 
all times nevertheless finds 

"Not one 
But hath some heinous freckle of the flesh 
Upon his shining cheek, not one hut ivinks 
His ray, opaqued with intermittent mist 
Of defect—" 

and assigns to Christ alone the perfection due to the divine. 
TTiis is because Lanier belongs to another class of thinkers 
and holds different ideas. There is an Ego-altruism as 
well as an egoism in American letters and Lanier is its 
highest exponent. He boasts an individuality of a free 
type, one working not under the laws of sin and death 
but in a glorious liberty. This liberty binds him more 
closely to the feet of God however, than could any en- 
forced obedience — There is no pantheism in his democ- 
racy. He says to the cloud: 

"If thou groiv or fade, 
Bring on delight or misery. 

Fly east or zvest, be made 
Snow, hail, rain, wind, grass, rose, light, shade; 
What matters it to thee? There is no thee. 



Sidney Lanikr 27 



"Pass, kinsman cloud, now fair and mild: 
Discharge the zvill that's not thine own. 
I zvork in freedom ivild, 

But work as plays a little child. 

Sure of the Father, Self, and Love, alone." 

He has been set free by the Father and become one with 
Paul in that significant paradox, "The prisoner of Christ". 
He is debtor to all alike to lay himself on the altar with 
a sacrifice similar to that of Jesus. All his development 
belongs to his kind and he can and does suffer loneliness. 
He makes himself a server of his brethren even though 
he knows in his liberty he can be judged of no man law- 
fully. 

''Oh let me love my Lord more fathom deep 
Than there is line to sound zvith : let me love 

My fellozv not as men that mandates keep : 
Yea, all that's lovable, bclozv, above. 

That let me love by heart, by hearty because 
(Free from the penal pressure of the lazvs) 
I find it fair." 

If he breaks forth into invective against opinion, 

''Opinion, damned Intriguer, gray with guile, 
Let me alone." 

it is nothing more than Paul crying, "God will smite thee 
thou whited sepulchre "and doubtless repents as sincerely. 
A soul like Lanier's could not grow selfishly though ex-, 
alted growth was his portion. His was to be the conde-/ 
scension to men of low estate in an assumption of theii/ 
sorrows. All Christly growth is self-abnegative and the 



28 The Poetry oi^ 



sorrow of refined sacrifice is when it comes unto its own 
and its own receives it not! Its wounds hurting the most 
are the ones received in the house of its friends. "Who 
made thee a prince and a judge over us? Intendest thou 
to kill me, as thou killedst the Egyptian?'* Is this the 
reward for refusing to be called the son of Pharaoh's 
daughter? "Betray est thou the Son of Man with a kiss?" 
This is really the loneliness of the ego-altruistic souls of 
the world; the 

''Sours sad grozvth o'er stationary friends." 

This is, 

''The artist's pain — to ivalk his blood-stained zvays 
A special soul, yet judged as general — '' 

Lanier had the conscious worth of one who seeing clever- 
ness occupy the exalted seats, grew sorrowful in waiting 
for the delayed "Friend, go up higher," though the mys- / 
terious inner knowledwge told him, eventually the merely ^ 
clever would be found without the wedding garment. He 
must have denied himself had he yielded to the tempta- 
tion to turn stones into bread to feed his own hunger. 
Every true artist has this trial and knows in the deep of 
his heart a yielding will forever prohibit the multiplication 
of the loaves and fishes for the multitudes, so he goes on 
singing songs the world doesn't want to hear, painting 
pictures the world cares not to hang in its galleries, com- 
posing symphonies too complex for the world's orchestral 



Sidne:y Lanier 29 



taste. Singing to the spheric measures, the world denies 
him even cleverness, questioning his abiHty 

*'To hold, with keen yet loving eyes, 
Art's realm from Cleverness apart ; 
To knozv the Clever good and wise 
Yet haunt the lonesome heights of Art." 

There is also the haunting from the heights of Art for him, 
with their queries soul-deep as to whether he has the right 
to take Excelsior for his bannered device. He is the 
Columbus of his own "Psalm of The West'*: 

"My Daivnf My Daumf Hozv if it never break f 
How if this West by other Wests is pieced, 
And these by vacant Wests on Wests increased — 
One Pain of Space, zvith hollozv ache on ache 
Throbbing and ceasing not for Christ's ozvn sake? — 
Big perilous theorem, hard for king and priest : 
Pursue the West but long enough, 'tis Bast! 
Oh, if this zvatery zvorld no turning take! 
Oh, if for all my logic, all my dreams, 
Provings of that zvhich is by that zvhich seems. 
Fears, hopes, chills, heats, patiences, droughts, tears, 
Wife-griez'ings, slights on love, embedded years. 
Hates, treaties, scorns, uplif tings, loss and gain, — 
This earth, no sphere, be all one sickening plane!" 

Fears without, doubts within, but still the determination 
to finish the course : 

"Steerman, I said, hold straight into the West" — 

at times calling unto the world 

''Hast he'er a honey-drop of love for me 
In the huge nectary?" — 



30 The Poetry oi^ 



at times half-wondering at God that He should let the 
struggle tighten so close about the hearts of wife and 
babes, not fully realizing possibly the law of sons and 
chastening; at times indignant with the questioning for 
poets as a class why the **Course-of-things'* like some 
great ox should eat them as clover: 

''And to this end? 
This, God? This, troublous-breeding Earth f This, Sun 
Of hot, quick pains? To this no-end that ends, 
These Masters ivrought, and wept, and szveated blood, 
And burnedy and loved, and ached zvith public shame. 
And found no friends to breathe their love to, save 
Woods, and zvet pillows? This was all? This Ox?" 

yet even in his questioning holding in soul-solution the 
answer, 

"The pasture is God's pasture" ; 

betimes finding his wife's eyes smiling when God would 
seem to frown: 

"Dear eyes, dear eyes and rare complete — 
Being heavenly-sweet and earthly-siveet, 
I marvel that God made you mine. 
For when He frozvns 'tis then ye shine!", 

yet knowing and hastening to say 

"Wife-love flies level his dear mate to seek : 
God-love darts straight into the skies above" — ; 

and at last finding "The little gray leaves were kind to 



Sidney Lanier 31 



him" too in his Gethsemane-resignation when the com- 
forting angel comes 

"And his big-blessing dozvnivard sheds." 

Thus the **!" stands out but its baptism has been accom- 
plished. I 
Lanier found comfort in the sunrise in the realiza-j 
tion that "Sorrow endureth for the night but joy comethL 
in the morning." In the marvelous translation of sor- 
row into peace which comes when we grow big enough 
in our affliction to encompass the sorrows of others and 
give them consolation he found his consolation : 

"Oh, if thy soul's at latter gasp for space, 
With trying to breathe no bigger than thy race 
Just to be fellow' d, when that thou hast found 
No man with room, or grace enough of bound 
To entertain that Nezv thou tell'st, thou art — 
'Tis here, 'tis here thou canst unhand thy heart 
And breathe it free and breathe it free, 
By rangy marsh, in lone sea-liberty" — 

The soul must get too big to need comfort before it can 
comfort, but when the tide of God's ocean-love has poured 
into a lonely soul enlarging it to the exaltation of com- 
forter, 

"I zvould I cotdd know what swimmeth belozv when 
the tide comes in". 



32 The Poetry op 



(Uliaptfr i>tx 



;# 



"And he look of the stones of that place, and put them for his 
pillows, and lay down in that place to sleep. And he 
dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and 
the top of it reached to heaven: And behold the angels 
of God ascending and descending on it." 



K f ^jf^ANIER in his wanderings over the South in search 



?. 



W 



of temporal health found immortality for his poetry 
for every place he visited contributed to him its 
] quota of greatness. His poems vs^ere written in Georgia^ 
^v^ Maryland, Pennsylvania, Alabama and Florida. Tampaj 
^ ^^Macon, Sunnyside, Prattsville, Baltimore, Chadds* Ford^, 
Philadelphia and West Chester were the birth towns of 
his poems, but their inception and soul growth were in 
every place he visited. For instance, he wrote no poems 
in Texas but his letters to his wife quoted by William 
Hayes Ward clearly indicate the indwelling of the song 
spirit there — 



"All day my soul hath been cutting swiftly into the 
great space of the subtle, unspeakable deep, driven by 
zvind after wind of heavenly melody, lite very inner 
spirit and essence of all zvind-songs, bird-songs, passion- 
songsy folk-songs, country-songs, sex-songs, soul-songs 
and body-songs hath blown upon me in quick gusts like 
the breath of passion, and sailed me into a sea of vast 
dreams zvhereof each wave is at once a vision and a 
melody." 



SlDNE^Y IvANlER 33 



He who could 

"Fly in the greatness of God as the marsh-hen flies 
In the freedom that fills all the space 'twixt the marsh 
and the skies" — 

caught, possibly subconsciously, the spirit of the prairie as 
well as the sea. It was a prairie song of which he wrote 
to his wife and easily recognized as such by one accus- 
tomed to prairie music: The song of a Texas prairie in 
its multiplied and multivaried forms and phases of beauty ; 
singing with the mocking bird trilling from the mesquites 
against a prairie breeze! The mysterious, sunwarmed, 
grass-covered, moon-flooded prairie, baring its breast to 
the stars and holding its silent forces in such tense sub- 
jection, the very essence of song broods over it! The 
prairie, an unrolled scroll covered with the writings of 
God, holding the breadth of vision and the wideness of 
sight! The Lanier who could win violin notes from the 
flute wedded the spirit of the prairie to the soul of the 
marsh. His was a comprehensive song and who can fail to 
see the guidance of God in the journeys of this "all-lover" 
over the land. Thus land and sea poured their treasures 
into the marsh. From the tributaries of all sources oft 
inspiration who could bind the sweet influences pouring 
into the Marshes of Glynn? A multitudinous growth 
was the artist's, a growth "rooted and grounded in the 
love" of God*s presence in the marsh: 

"By so many roots as the marsh grass sends in the sod 
I zvill heartily lay me a-hold on the greatness of God!" 



34 Ths Poetry o^ 



All the songs until "Sunrise*' are indicative of recep- 
tion; they voice the cumulative potentiation of the poet. 
Ever receiving, receiving, silently for the most part but 
occasionally startled into rhapsody, taking short or even 
extended flights toward the sun, the poet grew; grew 
like John the Baptist in the wilderness so big-souled, so 
one-idead, so portent of light, so filled with the knowledge 
of the imminent event of the world, that his mission could 
be expressed in one song "Sunrise'* even as John's was 
fulfilled in one sentence, "Behold the Lamb of God that 
taketh away the sin of the world." The messages are 
identical. The mystery of John's life in the desert has 
never been revealed; we only know he was with God. 
His presence made glad one of the waste places of the 
world, the wilderness, just as Lanier*s lent rejoicing to 
another, the marsh. More light can be thrown upon the 
mystery of Lanier*s growth because he has in epochal 
poems portrayed it. We can watch the convergence of 
influences in the poem "The Marshes of Glynn". In 
this poem we find the culmination of reception and the 
fulness of indwelling. It is the Baptism of the marsh by 
the sea and the anointing of the poet's soul : 



^Ye marshes, hoiv candid and simple and nothing — 

withholding and free 
Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves 

to the sea! 

Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and 

the sun, 
Ye spread and span like the catholic man who hath 

mightily won 



Sidney Lanier 35 



God out of knozvlcdge and good out of infimte pain, 
And sight out of blindness and purity out of a stain." 

Everything converged to the Marsh, even the sea-birds* 
flight 

''As zvhcn the grim-beaked pelicans level file 
Across the sunset to their seazvard isle 
On solemn wings that wave but seldom-zvhile" — 

The infilHng expanded his soul to its Hmits; the flight of 
all wings was inward to fold in rest for an outward flight: 

"The creeks overflozv; a thousand rivulets run 
'Twixt the roots of the sod; the blades of the marsh 

grass stir; 
Passeth a hurrying sound of zvings that zvestzvard 

zvhirr; 
Passeth and all is still; and the currents cease to run; 
And the sea and the marsh are one." 

Here is Lanier's benediction from Paul's prayer for the 
Ephesians : — 

"That Christ may dwell in your heart by faith; 
that ye being rooted and grounded in love, may be 
able to comprehend zvith all saints zvhat is the breadth, 
and length, and depth and height: and to knozv the 
love of Christ, zvhich passeth knozvlcdge, that ye might 
be filled zvith all the fullness of God" I 

There is a realization, rapturous and pure, of the in- 
filling, but the appreciation of its significance possibly came 
later — 

"Oh, what is abroad in the marsh and the terminal sea? 
Somehozv my soul seems suddenly free 



36 Tut POKTRY o^ 



Prom the zvcigliing of fate and the sad discussion of sin, 
By the length and the breadth and the sweep of the 
Marshes of Glynn — "" 

The flight of the song-spirit has settled upon him in dove- 
Hke power. Its eye of faith has received its vision and 
when it flies again its wings of love will bear it forth, 
having brought the olive leaf to him, to "return not again 
unto him any more." Let the apt words of one of Father 
Ryan's poems trace its flight through the world : 

''A dove, whiter than whiteness' very self, 
Fluttered through his sleep in vision or dream, 
Bearing in its flight a spotless rose. It 
Pleiv azvay across great, long distances^ 
Thro' forests where the trees were all in dream. 
And over wastes where silences held reign. 
And down pure valleys, till it reached a shore 
By zvhich blushed a sea in the evening sun; 
The dove rested there azuhile, rose again 
And flezv across the sea into the sun" ! 

"Every valley shall be filled" and the marsh is as high as 
Ararat. From it the song was to go forth : — 

— ''Go, trembling song, 
And stay not long: and stay not long: 
Thourt only a gray and sober dove. 
But thine eye is faith and thy zving is love!' 

For two years this fulness abides in him indicative of 
possession. All songs during this time embody the thought 
of possession, serenity, forgiveness toward his fellow men 
though in each song there is a suggestion of some big to- 
morrow when all his soul shall voice itself suddenly in an 



Sidney Lanikr 37 



irresistible "Repent ye, for the Kingdom of Heaven is 
at hand". They are sweet converts, these songs, to the 
"Coming One*' — "The Sun of Righteousness with heal- 
ing in His wings*' — and seem to be baptized in the Jordan 
of his own approaching death. The dawn-prophecy is 
in every one of them. It is the time Lanier speaks of as 
Mary-morning 

''Peace to the ante-reign 
Of Mary-Morning, blissful mother mild, 
Minded of nought but peace, and of a child." 

In the meantime physical death draws nearer to him, fever 
claims him, then to his soul from out the East comes the 
mysterious *'sun-hint" and ecstacy possesses him: — 

"'O rhapsody of the wraith of red, 
O blush but yet in prophecy, 
O sun-hint that hath over spread 

Sky, marsh, my soul and yonder sail". 

So this Columbus of music sights his West, his hard- 
earned questus o*er the sea : 

'Why, look, 'tis dawn, the land is clear: 'tis done! 
Two dazvns do break at once from Time's fidl hand — 
God's Bast — mine, West ; good friends, behold mv 
Land!" 



38 The Poetry of 



Oltjaptf r ^pfaftt 



By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange 
country, dwelling in tabernacles with ******* ^Yiq heirs 
with him of the same promise : For he looked for a city 
which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God." 



^I^ET Jethro seek another herdsman and Jesse another 
^Jy shepherd for his flocks when God wants a lawgiver 
or a psalmist. Lanier realized the needs of the 
South and the nation and God put in his heart the spirit 
of song. It was a long time before he fully recognized 
his "high calHng'* but when he did he left the practice 
of common law and went before the Supreme Court of 
the Universe assuming the trials of the prophets as well as 
their message. His message, at first largely commercial, 
he advised against the system prevailing in the South of 
planting cotton on the credit system. This even took a 
humorous form in the beginning, but a criticism of only a 
sub-lieutenant of the brutal god — Mammon — is no jesting 
matter. He who would tread on the serpent's head may 
feel the fang in the heel and a pierced hand alone can 
effectively use the "Sword of the Spirit." The inveighing 
against the credit-system was an Ithuriel touch and what 
had squatted as a toad leaped a devil. **Trade*s'* "blood- 
shotten eyes*' were turned upon him and behind the eyes 
was revealed the malignancy of spirit. Poverty and hard 
labor and wasting breath and household cares or rather 



Sidne:y Lanidr 39 



household needs, united against him. He dropped any 
idea of a dialectic logomachy and turned from the use of 
humor, seeking a vocabulary of light and the doctrines of 
the Son of God. The "Bread of Life'* becomes his first 
effective weapon. Here he took the native Corn to lead 
the attack with its green beauty and golden harvest; the 
indigenous life-sustainer *'that is pleasant to the eye and 
good for food'', and Joseph-like would prepare his people 
against the lean years produced by famine-breeding 
Trade. This he followed with his '*Symphony " trying 
with bread and music to overcome the powers of evil. His 
"Music is love in search of a word"; harmony seeking 
the Divine Logos that the land may be healed. But 
Goliath had brethren and there were other giants in the 
land and the whole brood should be exterminated so the 
conflict deepens and his prophesies broaden. Freedom 
becomes his theme and under its genial warmth he chants 
the motif of the Psalm of The West : 

''For Weakness, in freedom, grazes stronger than Strength 

zvith a chain; 
And Error, in freedom, zvill come to lamenting his stain. 
Till freely repenting he zvhiten his spirit again; 
And Friendship, in freedom, zvill blot out the bounding 

of race; 
And straight Lazv, in freedom, zvill curve to the round- 
ing of grace; 
And Fashion, in freedom, zvill die of the lie in her face; 
And Desire flame zvhite on the sense as a fire on a 

height, 
And Sex flame zvhite in the soul as a star in the 

night, 
And Marriage plight sense unto sold as the tzvo- 
colored light 



40 The Poetry of 



Of the fire and the star shines one zvith a duplicate 
might; 
And Science he known as the sense making love to the 

All, 
And Art be known as the soul making love to the All 
And Love be known as the marriage of man zvith the 
All— 
Till Science to knowing the Highest shall lovingly 

turn, 
Till Art to loving the Highest shall consciously burn. 
Till Science to Art as a man to a zvonian shall yearn, 
— llten morn! 
When Faith from the zvedding of Knozving and Loving 

shall purely be born, 
And the Child shall smile in the West, and the West to 

the Bast give morn, 
And the Time in that ultimate Prime shall forget old 

regrcttng and scorn, 
Yea, the stream of light shall give off in a shimmer the 
dream of the night forlorn.'' 

To the "Tall young Adam of the West" he gives the 
God-directed command to subdue the earth: 

"Then all the beasts before thee passed — 
Beast War, Oppression, Murder, Lust, 

False Art, False Faith, slozv skulking last — 
And out of Time's thick-rising dust 

Thy Lord said, 'Name them, tame them, Son; 

Nor rest, nor rest, till thou hast done.' " 

This same idea wedded to a spirit of music and peace is 
the theme of **The Centennial Meditation of Columbia*'. 
It is in Sunrise he finds the solution of all the needs of 
the land and he gives it in the thought of the dawn of the 
perfect day. He drops all catalogueing of remedies and 
voices ihe one general principle of Cure; the presence of 



Sidney Lanier 41 



the "Sun of Righteoi'sness with the healing in his wings'*. 
Here again there comes the scriptural promise, the hope- 
productive because faith-rooted promise; the moral dig- 
nity of man's future and the secret of his success through a 
higher power! Lanier recognizes the need of freedom 
from sin as essential to this success hence the application 
of the scripture is pertinent: 

''But one in a certain place testified, saying. What 
is man, that thou art mindful of him? or the son of man 
that thou visit est him? Thou madest him a little lozver 
than the angels: thou crozvnedst him zvith glory and 
honor, and didst set him over the works of thy hands'. 
Thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet. 
For in that he put all in subjection under him, he left 
nothing that is not put under him. But nozv zve see not 
yet all things put under him. But zve see Jesus, zvho 
zvas made a little lozver than the angels for the suffering 
of death, crozvned zvith glory and honor; that he by the 
grace of God should taste death for every man." 

Lanier doesn t see all things in subjection, but he sees 
Jesus! He sees Him in the shining of the sun crowned 
with honor and glory. Here is the whole message, Lanier 
points to the Lord of the dawn and chants his hymn of 
the perfect day. This is no Ossian singing nor is the 
song in the spirit of Greek or Persian, it is in the spirit 
of young Malachi's Elijah. In the shining of the sun he 
sees effulgence of the Son, and conscious of the divine 
fellowship applies to the sun the same title Christ used 
toward His followers, "Friend Sun" — "Behold I have 
called you friends". As Lanier sees the light of all 
dawns in this poem so does he see the light for every body 



42 The: Poetry oif 



and his own experience constitutes only a part of the song. 
He knows the rays will fall on the just and the unjust 
alike as the goodness of God calling them to repentance. 
It shines as the message of the morning with the doctrines 
of the dawn writ in dew and garnished with sunlight. 



Sidney Lanie:r 43 



Cljaptf r lEtgtit 



"Watchman, what of the night? The watchman said, The morn- 
ing cometh — " 

^^N the Marshes of Glynn we find the baptism of the 
a|I marsh and in Sunrise its transfiguration: yea, its 
resurrection! As has been said Lanier had for two 
years been filled with the fulness of the message and 
now had come the fulness of time. I recognize the diffi- 
culty of trying to interpret the outpouring of that fulness 
from the deep brooded over by the song spirit until the 
whole became instinct with an immortal life demanding 
manifestation. I can only hope the tender love and af- 
fection filling my heart for the singer may guide me into 
the spirit of his song. What a lovely and lovable soul 
voiced itself. My eyes are wet and my soul hovering 
between prayer and praise while I listen. I feel like a 
little child who watching a Florida sunset at last sighed 
and half- whispered **I didn't know God made it so beau- 
tiful, but Fm glad '. This was the man who went with 
the Master into the woods and didn't sleep. Such tense 
sweetness never quivered with expectation of expression. 
Lanier had a threefold power as a singer of Light. 
He was prophet. Herald and Apostle in one. "Sunrise," 
displays him at his best in all three capacities. The 
fulness of time has come for him as well as the fulness 
of song. It is the outpouring of his soul, the emptying 



44 The Poktry oi? 



of its glory in song, the return of the large gifts, the five 
talents become ten, to the Giver; the hour of service, the 
efflux of spirit-power 

"When that zvhich drezu from out the 
boundless deep 
Turns again home — '' 

'7/ any man thirst let him come unto Me and drink. He 
that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out 
of him shall flow rivers of living water — '' 

Lanier gave not only an epitome of all his past singing in 
"Sunrise" but found in it his perihelion. It is not a de- 
scription of one sunrise but the accumulated light of every 
sunrise he had ever know^n. It is retrospective, introspec-/ 
tive, prospective; the synthesis and syntagma of his poetry;! 
the analysis of his growth. It is a history, a proclamation, 
a prophecy and its exegesis, a sun-thesis, the showing forth 
of a mystery. Lanier was a thesaurus of light and this 
poem is the open ses?me to the golden treasury — It con- 
tains his message to the world. 

'7n my sleep I zvas fain of their fellowship, fain 
Of the live oak, the marsh and the main. 
The little green leaves would not let me alone in my sleep: 
Up-breathed from the marshes, a message of range and 

of szveep, 
Interwoven with zvaftures of zvild sea-liberties, drifting. 
Came through the lapped leaves, sifting, sifting, 
Came to the gates of sleep. 

Then my thoughts, in the dark of the dungeon-keep 
Of the Castle of Captives hid in the City of Sleep, 
Upstarted, by twos and by threes assembling: 



Sidney Lanier 45 



The gates of sleep fell a-trembling 
Like as the lips of a lady that forth falter yes, 

Shaken with happiness: 
The gates of sleep stood zvide." 

Here is the consciousness of power and its source 
waiting for expression. Then, just as the Sermon on the 
Mount logically demanded a life-expression in its author, 
so this source of power demands its message. *' Behold I 
stand at the door and knock*' says the message of range 
and sweep, and that which was swimming below when the 
tide came in stirs for its outward voyage. The assembling 
of the thoughts by twos and threes from their abysmal 
places for a unified voice stands for the fuU growth of 
the prepaiativc-silence. What secret there be in the 
woman's soui when it yields to the thought of the God- 
taught mission as wife and the happiness-quivering lips 
acknowledge the willingness to assume the future, undis- 
mayed by any amazement; what preparation she may 
make in the sanctity of her virginal purity for the cry 
"Behold the bride groom cometh," that secret was in the 
soul of him for whom the gates of his sleep stood wide. 
Here's womanhood'? secret seen through the "twice-eyed" 
vision of his wile's eyes and his. f It is a secret of woman- 
hood just a? the thought of maidenhood pure, undefiled 
and undeffable was expressed or rather suggested in the 
Marshes or Glynn: 

"Inzvard and outzvard to northzvard and southzvard the 
beaeh-lines linger and curl 
As a silver-zvr ought garment that clings to and follozvs 
the firm szveet limbs of a girl'. 



46 The Poetry of 



This exemplifies the growth in the two years of possession 
of the tide's fullness just as we are taught by some psychol- 
ogists that the thought given to the subjective mind will 
come forth in the time of need mervellously grown in 
beauty and stature : Thus, girlhood at evening and wife- 
hood at dawn. Three words can express fairly well the 
subject matter of the first stanza of the poem with the 
understanding that it is historical and retrospective : De- 
sire, Invitation, opportunity, for the soul. 

'7 have waked, I have come, my beloved! I might not 
abide : 
/ have come ere the daimi, O beloved, my live-oaks, 
to hide 
In your gospelling-glooms. — to be 
As a lover in heaven, the marsh my marsh and the sea 
my sea". 

Here is the consciousness of full power and the 
prophecy of full expression thereof. So far there is no 
sight but merely a sense of the dawn; the glooms are 
there but they are filled with the gladtidings. This is the 
response to the invitation, the reply to the call in the first 
stanza in which there sounded the message. 

'7 sleep, but my heart waketh; it is the voice of my 
beloved that knocketh, saying Open to me my sister, 
my love, my dove, my unde filed: for my head is filled 
zvith dezv, and my locks zvith the drops of the night.'' 
'7 rose up to open to my beloved; and my hands dropped 
zvith myrrh, and my fingers zvith szveet smelling myrrh, 
upon the handles of the lock." 



This stanza is purely devotional. 



Sidney Lanie^r 47 



"Tell me, szveet burly-bark' d, man-bodied Tree 
That mine arms in the dark are embracing, dost knozv 
From ivhat fount are these tears at thy feet which flow? 
7'hey rise not from reason, but deeper inconsequent deeps. 
.Reason s not one that weeps — 
What logic of greeting lies 
Betzvixt dear over-beautiful trees and the rain of the eyes? 

Who h?s understood the philosophy of tears? Not 
the tears arising from grief or pain, sorrow or disappoint- 
ment, but from the "inconsequent deeps" of over-iull hap- 
piness? Possibly when we understand the scripture where 
it says "And God shall wipe away all tears from their 
eyes** we may find it means the tears coming from the 
very joy of the meeting with Him in His tabernacle when 
He shall dwell with men and be their God and they His 
people. Lanier loved the trees and in this is in line with 
all poetic philoi^ophy for where the poet from the Sweet 
Singer of Israel to the Great Laureate of England, who 
has not found in them the lessons of the Almighty. Here 
is Lanier Christly in his affection. This is his source for 
the "Ballad of The Trees and The Master** 

"Into the woods my Master zvent, 
Clean fospent, forspent. 
Into the woods my Master came. 
Forspent zvith love and shame. 
But the Olives they zvere not blind to Him, 
The little gray leaves zvere kind to Him : 
The thorn tree had a mind to Him 
When into the woods He came. 

Out of the zvoods my Master went, 

And He was zvell content. 

Out of the woods my Master came, 



48 The Poktry op 



Content with death and shame. 
When Death and Shame would woo Him last, 
From under the trees they drew Him last; 
'Twas on a tree they slezv Him — last, 
When out of the woods He came". 

The rain of the eyes referred to is not the expression of 
the same feeling voiced in Clover where woods and wet 
pillows are the only friends capable of receiving confi- 
dences of heart aches, this is a different cause of tears 
producing this flow. I saw a woman weep once when on 
her death bed her first grandchild was laid in her arms 
and with the tears came a little cry an archangel couldn't 
put into words. Heaven could not be a greater stranger 
to sorrow than was she at the moment. I saw a father 
weep once when a prodigal came home. Christ sweated 
blood in his agony but I can imagine there were tears in 
His eyes when He said, after the hours of darkness, 
"Father into thy hands I commend my spirit," and I know 
He wept just before the resurrection of Lazarus. Some- 
thing of all of this was in the heart of Lanier in tins hour 
before dawn with the trees. After all the vision of the 
pure river of the water of life were incomplete with out 
the trees of life being on either side. The word here is 
interrogation. 

"O cunning green leaves, little masters! like as ye gloss 
All the dull-tissued dark with your luminous darks that 

emboss 
The vague blackness of night into pattern and plan, 
So, 
(But would I could know, but would I could know,) 
With your question embroidering the dark of the ques- 
tion of man, — 



Sidney Lanier 49 



So, zvith your silences purfling this silence of man 
While his cry to the dead for some knowledge is under 
the ban, 

Under the ban, — 
So, ye have zvrought me 
Designs on the night of our knowledge, — yea, ye have 
taught me, 
So, 
That haply zve know somezvhat more than zve knozv" . 

The twenty third psalm with its valley of the Shadow 
of death is embodied in this stanza. There were no 
shadow were there not some light either shining or prom- 
ised to shine. These shadows show design and in every 
night promise day. The single day and night have 
the importance too Christ gives them. Life as taught by 
Him is an every day life finding an epitome in the twenty 
four hours. There is the daily bread to be prayed for 
and as anger should not go into the grave neither should 
the sun go down on wrath. The one word in this stanza 
is the word "Faith** ! 



50 The Poetry op 



OlljaiJtpr Ntn? 



'And we know that all things work together for good to them 
that love God, to them who are the called according to 
his purpose." 

"Ye lispers, whisperers, singers in storms, 
Ye consciences nmrmiiring faiths under forms, 
Ye ministers meet for each passion that grieves, 
Friendly, sisterly, szveetheart leaves, 
Oh, rain me dozvn from your darks that contain me 
Wisdojns ye zvinnow from winds that pain me, — 
Sift dozvn tremors of szveet-zvith-in-szveet 
That advise me of more than they bring, — repeat 
Me the woods-smell that szviftly but nozv brought breath 
From the heaven-side bank of the river of death, — 
Teach me the terms of silence, preach me 
The passion of patience, — sift me, — impeach me, — 
And there. Oh there 
As ye hang with your myriad palms upturned in the air, 
Pray me a myriad prayer. 



^^HERE is a good type of Lanier's growth in the 
^i stanza just quoted for his being and poetry, is, 
while voiced to the high tone of light, a concentra- 
tion of numberless tributary thoughts and influences. He 
who could lay hold of the greatness of God with as many 
holds as the roots of the marsh grass, could also leceive a 
thousand fold growth from the leaves of the forest. The 
strong spirit of cooperation is shown, a cooperation how- 
ever forming a symphony; a harm.ony, built up not like 
Wagner's of discordant elements, but of every thing in 



Sidney Lanier 51 



"Sweet conjunction". The stanza is a stanza of prayer 
pure and simple, but is invocatory and not precative. 
There is no thought of any mediation in it, nor is there 
any hint of the creature standing for the Creator. Moses 
never worshipped the burning bush but learned its lesson. 
Lanier has developed by as many growths as there are 
leaves on the live-oak trees and the combined growth is 
voiced in prayer that is praise and praise only. He is 
Davidic in his thought for he is like a tree planted by the 
rivers of waters. He would not find however in any mes- 
sage the trees might bring the counsels of the ungodly 
leading him to idolatry in its first manifestation. He is 
thinking really not of live oaks but the trees of life and 
wants the woods-smell from the heaven-side bank of the 
river of death. He wants to express in a twofold manner 
the cry which has been growing during the time since the 
tide came in. It is not a mere ecstatic shout but a strong, 
intelligential psalm with a broad winged sweep. Impeach 
me O leaves if I haven't learned your instruction about 
God. The "terms of silence" is the unseen growth be- 
tween the acorn and the fully developed tree or rather 
between the roots of the marsh-grass and the leaves of the 
oak. The sorrow in the wait and growth being like the 
agency of apocrenic acid, the stage in which mattr-r makes 
its upward journey from dead plants to live vegetable tis- 
sue. "Except you be born from above," unless there be 
the regeneration ye cannot enter into an expression of the 
terms of silence. What I learned from the roots of the 
marsh grass that let me send forth in a myriad prayer of 



52 The: Poetry o^ 



praise from the leaves of the live-oak. And let me re- 
member that while the grass roots in the silence were 
grasping the regenrative growth from the greainess of 
God, the leaves. 



-with holloiv palms uplifted high 



To catch the stars' most sacred rain of light" 

grew in the same greatness, and sea and sky, the music of 
the spheres and Ocean's roar, must be in the singiug. The 
passion of this patience is fervency of song, the tones taking 
the place of the tears wiped away by the Son of God. 
All that goes 

"With stress and nrgence bold of prisoned spring 
And ecstacy of hiirgeoning" ; 

all the desire of the mocking bird from the first harsh 
hunger cry until the perfect song with its 

— "Midnights of tone entire, — 
Tissues of inoonlight shot ivith songs of fire; — 
Bright drops of tune, from oceans infinite 
Of melody, sipped off the thin-edged zvave 
And trickling dozvn the beak, — ''. 

all is found in the passion of patience. Lanier is thinking 
of the Christ-cry at His ascension. Who having run with 
patience the race set before Him from the lowly manger, 
to Egypt-flight; from Rabbi-questioning to Jordan's wa- 
ters; from devil-temptation to Gethsemane-garden ; from 
Judas-kiss to Peter-denial; from Golgotha-height to Je- 
seph-tomb; from sea-shore to mount of ascenscion, there 



Sidne:y Lanikr 53 



suddenly raises his head and in heavenly voice, too rapt 
for mortal ears, cries out 

"Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and he ye lifht up, 
ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall 
come in." 

while the antiphonal response from heaven calls back 

"Who is this King of glory? The Lord strong and 
mighty, the Lord mighty in battle" 

for theirs is the passion of patience too, then the exquisite 
joy of repetition, the assurance-delight, 

"Lift up your heads ye gates; even lift them up 
ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall 
come in" ! 

and again heaven is vocal with response as he mounts up, 
the King of Kings and Lord of lords; 

"Who is this King of glory f The Lord of hosts, 
he is the King of glory." 



54 The Poetry op 



"That ye might be filled with all the fullness of God." 

"My gossip, the owl, — is it thou 
That out of the leaves of the lozv-hanging hough, 
As I pass to the beach, art stirred? 
Dumb zvoods, have ye uttered a bird?" 

^^N this brief stanza there seems to be a single thought 
Jll and a single advance. He leaves the w^oods for the 
beach, and the woods have uttered a live something. 
It is the progress from faith to hope and hope is the word 
expressing the stanza. The woods have received from 
wind, stars, sun, sea, and soil; the rains and frosts have 
added to their enlargement, but their forces have been 
silent, their music eolian, but now the idea comes with 
quickening suddenness, there has been the thought of an 
intrinsic utterance. It is a logical step from the faith of 
the preceding stanza to the hope of this. 

"Reverend Marsh, low-couched along the sea, 

Old chemist, rapt in alchemy. 
Distilling silence, — lo, 
That which our father-age had died to knozv — 

The menstruum that dissolves all matter — thou 
Hast found it : for this silence, filling nozv 
The globed clarity of receiving space, 
This solves us all : fuan, matter, doubt, disgrace, 
Death, love, sin, sanity. 
Must in yon silence' clear solutioji lie. 
Too clear! That crystal nothing zvho'll peruse? 
The blackest night could bring us brighter nezvs. 
Yet precious qualities of silence haunt 



Sidney Lanier 55 



Round these vast margins, ministrant. 
Oh, if thy soiiVs at latter gasp for space, 
With trying to breathe no bigger than thy race, 
Just to be fellozvd, zvhen that thou hast found 
No man zvith room, or grace enough of bound 
To entertain that Nezv thou tell'st, thou art, — 
'l^is here, 'tis here thou canst unhand thy heart 
And breathe it free, and breathe it free, 
By rangy marsh in lone sea-liberty." 



IS 



Here Is the meaning of silence in its home. There 
not alone the transmutative-idea of matter, the father-age 
might have grasped and did grasp at the thought of 
change instead of annihilation, the father-age might have 
gloated over the work of the marsh with its silent genii 
of change but the silence Lanier speaks of is the silence 
of the heavenward space above the marsh. In the marshes 
of Glynn he learned to fly in the freedom of that space 
but again we see the developed thought, he learns the 
solution of the silence in the space. With him it means 
the Godhead above the space. **Be still and know that 
I am God.'* The solution of all mundane affairs comes 
from above. It is not only the adoration of Moses, "From 
everlasting unto everlastmg thou art God'* but it is the 
prayer of Christ **Our Father which art in heaven, hal- 
lowed by thy name**. Still, even then we can't by search- 
ing find out God and we must needs because of our very 
natures see as it were through a glass darkly. Any kind 
of a Hght can be seen m the darkness of the '^blackest 
night** but who can peruse the "globed clarity**? There 
is a primeval stillness in the silence here, a waiting in the 
abyss for the brooding of the Holy Spirit to move upon 



56 The Poetry of 



the waters. The haunting quaHties of silence is the near- 
ness with which God has drawn nigh unto us. Love fills 
the silence and out of it is comfort and a promise of that 
sympathy when we shall know even as we are known. 
The words **unhand thy heart*' carry with them the spirit 
of the scripture ^'Establish thou the work of our hands 
upon us: yea the work of our hands establish thou it'*. 
There shines forth the moral dignity of a manifestation 
of each inward grace; a realization with the work of our 
hands of every soul-dream. The words of this stanza 
are wisdom, peace, love and consolation or rathei appre- 
ciation. 

"The tides at full : the marsh zvith flooded streams 
Glimmers, a limpid labyrinth of dreams. 
Bach zvinding creek in grave entrancement lies 
A rhapsody of morning stars. The skies 
Shine scant with one forked galaxy, — 
The marsh brags ten : looped on his breast they lie.'' 

From the contemplation of God in His heaven there 
comes a contemplation of God in His handiwork and His 
fullness in the marsh. The further view pales in the con- 
templation of the nearer. Every creek in the marsh be- 
comes a milky way and in each there is the primal thought 
of creation's birth when the morning stars sang together. 
It is a "grave entrancement" because it is star music and 
therefore silent in the creeks. Here is the growth of the 
thought expressed in the Psalm of The West: **And 
the uttering of song was like to the giving of light." Still 
the extrinsic music but a **limpid labyrinth of dreams" 
will solve itself in utterance when the time comes. The 
power is there. Potentiation is the word for this stanza. 



Sidney Lanier 57 



"The Voice of one crying in the wilderness — " 

''Oh, what if a sound should he made! 
Oh, zvhat if a hound should he laid 
To this hozv-and-string tension of heauty and silence a- 

spring,— 
To the hend of heauty the hozv, or the hold of silence the 

string! 
I fear me, I fear me yon dome of diaphanous gleam 
Will break as a huhble o'er-hlown in a dream,— 
Yon dome of too-tenuous tissues of space and of night, 
Over-zveighted zvith stars, over-freighted zvith light. 
Over-sated zvith beauty and silence, zuill seem 

But a bubble that broke in a dream. 
If a bound of degree to this grace be laid, 
Or a sound or a motion made." 

PROPHECY is over and the herald is waiting the 
Spirit-command to cry **The Kingdom of heaven 
is at hand.** This is the genesis of sunrise, the be- 
ginning of the first dawn that ever stirred the heart of a 
man to praise. It goes back of that to the creation when 
**God said let there be lights in the firmament of the 
heaven to divide the day from the night**. What if that 
strange figure clad in camels* hair and a leathern girdle 
should suddenly cry aloud in the desert his penetrative 
cry of "Repent** which would gather the multitudes; con- 
vert the publicans; enlist the soldiery under a new and 
strange banner ; pierce the heart of the Pharisee : confound 
the Sadducee ; impugn the Sanhedrin ; question with soul- 



58 The Poetry oi^ 



searching power the very High Priest in the Holy of 
HoHes; sting with scorpion sting the hatred of Herodias 
and encircle with fire the heart of an adulterous king? 
Could this violin of the dawn strung with taut strings of 
silence, with beauty's bow athwart the strings strained to 
the soul for expression stand a motion without snapping 
or could this diaphanous dome expanded to its seeming 
capacity be tensible to another degree of boundary? 
Would not the very force of the sun break this bubble 
already over-freighted with stars and light? Is not the 
heart of the poet too full with this abundance of the in- 
dwelling of the tide to find utterance. Remember Lanier 
had fever at 104 degrees when he wrote this poem and 
was wondering if that wasted voice could hold the mes- 
sage. Could the Aladdin's lamp of the sun build a 
"more stately mansion" with a "dome more vast" here in 
the shadow of the dawn? The thought expressed in this 
stanza is not however after all one of doubt or fear but is 
put in the form it is merely to accentuate the illimitable 
expanse of beauty. It is the voice of Paul again as well 
as the longing of John : 

"Now unto him that is able to do exceedingly 
abundantly above all that zve ask or think according to 
the pozver that zvorketh in its, unto him be glory through 
the church {the tabernacle of the sun in this instance) 
by Christ Jesus (the Sun of Righteousness) through out 
all ages, zvorld zvithout end." 

The word for the stanza would be Capacity. 

"But no: it is made \ list! sonieivhere, — mystery, zvhere? 
In the leaves? in the air? 
In my heart? is a motion made: 



Sidney Lanikr 59 



'Tis a motion of dawn, like a flicker of shade on shade. 
In the leaves 'tis palpable : lozv multitudinous stirring 
Upwinds through the woods; the little ones, softly con- 
ferring, 
Have settled my Lord's to be looked for; so; they are 

still; 
But the air and my heart and the earth are a-thrill, — 
And look zvhere the wild duck sails round the bend of 
the river, — 

And look where a passionate shiver 

Expectant is bending the blades 
Of the marsh-grass in serial shimmers and shades, — 
And invisible zvings, fast fleeting, fast fleeting. 

Are beating 
The dark overhead as my heart beats, — and steady and 

free 
Is the ebb-tide flozving from marsh to sea — 

(Run home little streams. 

With your lap fulls of stars and dreams) , — 
And a sailor unseen is hoisting a-peak. 
For list, dozvn the inshore curve of the creek 

How merrily flutters the sail, — 
And lo, in the Bast! Will the Bast unveil? 
The Bast is unveiled, the Bast hath confessed 
A flush : 'tis dead; 'tis alive : 'tis dead, ere the West 
Was aware of it : nay, 'tis abiding, 'tis unzvithdrawn : 

Have a care, szveet Heaven! 'Tis dazvn." 

Was there ever a more exquisite transition from a 
climax? It is not a descent but a transmutation of silver 
stars to a golden sun not through a fiery agency, but by a 
"still small voice" multiplying itself to such proportions as 
the whispering sound David heard in the mulberry trees. 
The motion was made so softly and with such consummate 
skill the sound was born in the 

''Music that gentler on the spirit lies 
Than tir'd eyelids upon tir'd eyes". 



60 The Poetry oe 



The result however is not sleep but a wider vision. It is 
one of those subtle upward eagle-sweeps without a seem- 
ing movement of wing or rustling of feather. The tran- 
sition once made there dawns with increasing swiftness 
the radical effects of the change. There has been by 
some soul leap the passage of a "celestial diameter" and 
with, at first an imperceptible, movement, that begins to 
empty the creeks of their stellar glory and deepens into 
the ebbflow of the tide. All causes contributing to the 
fulness are reverting to their sources. The duck flies 
round the bend where in the skylight its body can be seen, 
and all the westward flying wings in the Marshes of 
Glynn are now swiftly beating in the outward flight. 
There is no loss however in their exodus for they have 
forever accomplished their mission. The little streams 
with lapfulls of stars and dreams can run home for like 
the quality of mercy they are twice-blessed. The parts 
have blended into the whole and the psychological moment 
has arrived. There is the fluttering sail and the heaven- 
traversing flush acknowledged by the West and suddenly 
the dawn. "The night is far spent, the day is at hand: 
let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let. us 
put on the armor of light'*. This is exactly the effect 
upon Lanier. The dawn is all that is needed to guarantee 
the sun. The words for this stanza are inspiration, expec- 
tation and realization. "The word of God came unto 
John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness! And he 
came into all the country about Jordan preaching the bap- 
tism of repentance for the remission of sins.** Such fidu- 
cial preaching and singing must bear a harvest. 



Sidney Lanikr 61 



Ollia^jtfr Stuplfae 



"And the Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to his temple— 
******* But who may abide the day of his coming? 
And who shall stand when he appeareth? For he is like 
a refiner's fire, and like fullers' soap: And he shall sit as a 
refiner and purifier of silver" — 

''Nozv a dream of a flame through that dream of a flush 
is uproUed: 
To the zenith ascending, a dome of undazzling gold 
Is builded, in shape as a bee-hive, from out of the sea : 
The hive is of gold undazzling, but oh, the Bee, 
The star-fed Bee, the build-fire Bee, 
Of dazzling gold is the great Sun-Bee 
That shall flash from the hive-hole over the sea." 

^j^EHOLD the process of transmutation. There is 
lla nc fear here of any danger of the too-tenuous tis- 
sues of the twiHght breaking in the coming of the 
sun; for the twiHght is gone; the morning star is fading 
and **Can any understand the spreading of the clouds"? 
In this instance the clouds are not rain clouds nor moisture- 
carrying, but clouds of light. Such a cloud as received 
Jesus in His ascension; such as constituted the excellent 
glory at the transfiguration and such as will encompass 
Him in His second coming. In fact there seems to be 
something of the thought of the second coming in this de- 
scription ; a kind of an Enoch-prophecy spanning the full- 
ness of time and looking to the end of time. The gold is 
undazzling because of the imminence of the "Light of the 



62 Thi^ Poetry op 



world." I have seen just such supernal preparation in 
the skies for the coming of the sun. Once in Florida near 
one of the numerous hyacinth-fringed lakes I watched the 
dawn and in the mist before the sun was visible a beautiful 
rainbow, distinctly displaying its septenary glories, arched 
the zenith. For the first time there came an understanding 
or at least a suggested understanding of the shining words 
of the apocalypse "And there was a rainbow round about 
the throne". The thought of the bee-hive is of course 
advanced because of the shape of the light-cloud though 
an inconsequent psychological suggestion brings to the 
mjnd the words of The Preacher "Truly the light is slveeU 
and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun." 
I think the idea advanced however is not one of honey- 
gathering but of edification. The sun-bee is a star-fed 
bee because he devours the more distant lights of the firma- 
ment and is the build-fire bee because through the heat 
of the sun is the building of the world of plants, men and 
animals. In him we live and move and have our being 
of the earthly kind and in Him Who is ever before the 
eyes of Lanier we live and move and have our being here 
and hereafter. The word for the stanza is illuminated 
edification. 

''Yet noiu the dezv-drop, nozv the morning gray, 
Shall live their little lucid sober day 
Bre with the sun their souls exhale away. 
Nozv in each pettiest personal sphere of dezv 
The summ'd morn shines complete as in the blue 
Big dew-drop of all heaven : zvith these lit shrines 
O' er-silvercd to the farthest sea-confines, 
The sacramental marsh one pious plain 



Sidney Lanier 63 



Of zvorship lies. Peace to the ante-reign 

Of Mary Morning, blissful mother mild, 
Minded of nought but peace, and of a child. 

Behold a repetition of the transition from the climax! 
A climax which was the development of a transition from 
a climax. In this instance there is suggested a circumfer- 
ential journey from the apex of the gold hive of light to 
the antipodal argent of the dew-drop. There is no descent 
in the emptying of Christ's glory when we consider the 
incarnation in its relation to the resurrection, ascension and 
second coming. Lanier who could express the wonder at 
the nonbreakage of the "diaphanous dome'* could in this 
larger atmosphere refer with out any danger of an anti- 
climax to the microcosm of the gray morning, the silver 
dew-drop. It is progressive singing voicing a growth from 
the scriptural idea "But we all, with open face beholding 
as in a glass the glory of the lord, are changed into the 
same image from glory to glory even as by the Spirit of 
the Lord." Solomon knew the heaven of heavens couldn't 
contain the glory of God but he also knew the temple 
could receive the Shechinah. The "sacramental marsh" 
is really then a kind of Holy of Holies in God's temple 
of the world and the "lit shrines" typify the golden can- 
dlesticks. The secret is found in the word "ante-reign" 
which prevents an acrisy of interpretation, since it carries 
the idea into the sanctuary of Judaism and not to the 
eucharistic altar. It is a beautiful transition from the gold 
hive to the microcosm of the silver dew approached 
through the gray morning, but having arrived at the dew- 



64 The Poetry of 



drop even though it does embody in miniature the "too- 
tenuous tissues'* of the dawn-dome, how is the upward 
path to be resumed with out hiatus or awkward move- 
ment? Here is to me the perfection of grace for with 
Judah*s sanctuary is expressed the hope of every loyal 
Jewish maiden and the short pause before the coming of 
the Sun is spoken of as Mary Morning. We are thus 
raised to the broad level of the sea in touch with all 
humanity on the plain of the Incarnation. From that un- 
defiled, pure Virgin, instinct through the Holy Spirit with 
the Babe of Bethlehem, the zenith can be reached again 
and this time in a chariot of fire. So Lanier has the sun 
to rise in the perfect peace of her whose mind was stayed 
on God. 

''And no man hath ascended 
up to heaven, but he that came dozvn from heaven, even 
the Son of man ivhich is in heaven." 

Again we see the "gray vision'* of his wife*s eyes set in 
his as Lanier finds in the sunrise the maternity of the 
world. Husbandhood and fatherhood are essential to the 
clarity of the scriptures for with out them the incarnation, 
and travail of the soul of Christ in crucifixion, are both 
largely incomprehensible. The words for the stanza are 
contemplation and meditation leading up to worship. 

"Not shiver than majesty moves, for a mean and a 
measure 
Of motion, — not faster than dateless Olympian leisure 
Might pace zvith unhloivn ample garments from pleasure 
to pleasure, — 



Sidne:y Lanier ^ 



The wave-serrate sea-rim sinks un jarring, unreeling 

Forever revealing, revealing, revealing,^ ^ 
Edgewise, bladezvise, halfzvise, zvholezvise ,— Us done! 

Good-morrozVj lord Sun! 
With several voice, zvith ascription one, 
The woods and the marsh and the sea and my soul 
Unto thee, zvhence the glittering stream of all morrows 

doth roll, ^ , 

Cry good and past-good and most heavenly morrow, 

lord Sun." 

From the universal breadth and indwelling there at 
the center of the horizon, Mary Morning made any mes- 
sage possible and John's cry in the wilderness was but the 
consequent acclamation of majesty. This stanza com- 
pletes the work of the herald, but completes it with the 
double vision of Christ; not only Him upon Whom the 
dove should descend but the One carrying the baptisms 
of the Spirit of life and the fire of consuming. The vision 
of John the Baptist and the vision of John the AposUe 
are the same and Daniel's rapt eyes saw the same figure 
of Jesus in His glory. "A mean and a measure of mo- 
tion" carries with it the superb idea of the far swing of 
the sun. 

''The heavens declare the glory of God; and the 
armament shezveth his handyzvork. Day unto day utter- 
eth speech, and night unto night shezveth knozvledge. 
There is no speech nor language zvhere their voice is not 
heard Their line has gone out through all the earth 
and their zvords to the end of the zvorld. In them hath 
he set a tabernacle for tlie sun, zvhich is as a bridegroom 
coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong 
man to run a race. His going forth is from the end of 
the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it; and there 
is nothing hid from the heat thereof." 



66 Th^ Poktry 0^ 



Here again is a phase of the patience of the race set before 
us, as there is no need of fret and worry for "To every 
thing there is a season and a time to every purpose under 
the heaven." He w^ho is the Author of our faith is the 
Finisher of the faith, the Alpha and the Omega. It is 
in this stanza that the work of the Herald is done and 
from now on to the end of the hymn the exposition is 
apostolic. It is in this stanza the song is sung and the 
message delivered. For this stanza, Lanier grew and de- 
veloped as John grew in the wilderness. "Behold the 
Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world". 
"They that sat in the darkness saw a great light". It is 
as the earth bows to the sun doing obeisance that it be- 
comes filled with the Hght of the sun. Only in Milton 
and in the psalms do we find the peers of poetic expres- 
sion, with its grandeur and smoothness of motion, its maj- 
esty of movement, so great the worlds move forward and 
so harmonious the equilibrium of planets is undisturbed, 
to the lines 

''The wave-serrate sea-rim sinks imjarring, unreeling, 
Forever revealing, revealing, revealing, — ". 

In these lines there is the history of redemption, the 
epitome of prophecy, the assurance that every knee shall 
bend and every tongue confess Christ, Lord. This is 
Lanier's message to the world, this pointing to the "Light 
of the World." He sees the world turning to God and as 
it turns the light shines and the perfect day dawns. It 
is a master mind that can hold the earth steady in its 



SiDNE^Y Lanier ^"7 



movement toward righteousness in spite of the powers of 
darkness with their sneering and mocking cry of "forever" 
in their temporal cloudiness. Lanier realized the hope of 
the world demanded more than a form of Godliness and 
so had his live-oak leaves as "consciences murmuring 
faiths under forms.** He would not do away with the 
"credo** of man but he sees that only such a power as the 
shining and heat of the sun can dissipate general darkness 
and give individual growth. Sunrise then is his gladtid- 
ings to the world, his gospel to humanity, for as I have 
said the sun is always but a type of the Son. As one who 
has loved His appearing he cries his obedience to the 
"Heavenly Vision". The world then is the tabernacle of 
the sun, the temple of the Son, and "I was glad when 
they said unto me let us go unto the house of the Lord." 



68 The Poetry of 



(Hi^tLptn (ll\xrUm 



"But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of Righteousness 
arise with healing in his wings — " 

''O Artisan born in the purple, — Workman Heat, — 
Parter of passionate atoms that travail to meet 
And he mixed in the death-cold oneness , — innermost 

Guest 
At the marriage of elements, — fellozv of publicans, — 

blest 
King in the blouse of flame, that loiter est o'er 
The idle skies yet laborest fast evermore, — 
Thou, in the fine forge-thunder, thou, in the beat 
Of the heart of a man, thou Motive, — Laborer Heat: 

Yea, Artist, thou, of whose art yon seas all neivs, 
With his inshore greens and manifold mid-sea blues. 
Pearl-glint, shell-tint, ancientcst perfectest hues 
Ever shaming the maidens, — lily and rose 
Confess thee, and each mild flame that gloivs 
In the clarified virginal bosoms of stones that shine, 
It is thine, it is thine : 

Thou chemist of storms, zvhether driving the uinds a- 

swirl 
Or a-flicker the subtiler essences polar that whirl 
In the magnet earth, — yea, thou with a storm for a heart. 
Rent with debate, many-spotted with question, part 
From part oft sundered, yet ever a globed light, 
Yet ever the artist, ever more large and bright 
Than the eye of a man may avail of: — manifold One, 
I must pass from thy face, I must pass from the face of 

the Sun : 
Old Want is awake and agog, every zvrinkle a-frown; 
The zvorker must pass to his zvork in the terrible town : 



Sidney Lanier El 



But I fear not. nax. and I fear not the thing to he done; 

lam stronq unth the strength of my lord the Sun 
HoJZkX'. dark soever the race that must needs 



he run, 

I am lit with the sun. 



K 



S has been said we have passed from prophecy to 
Ihe voice of the herald and from the decrease of 
the herald in the increase of the mightier One, to 
the apostolic teaching. We have the power of the sun 
expressed in a twofold vision as the Artisan and the Icon- 
IIstLd in their correct sequence, first the bu.lde^o 
good and then the destroyer of the ev.1 m the way. The 
walls of Jericho never fell until the chosen people with a 
forty years' trainmg m the wilderness marched around 
them. So the first office of the sun is to give life and quiet 
growth and se^i^iT^HJI^iS^ul development. T^is is 
the sun that plays in the material, temporal world, th. 
part played by the Son in the spiritual, eternal world 
This sun is the resurrection and the life of dead bodie 
of plants and the death of the wheat gram which excep 
it die abideth unto itself. This sun is the regeneration of 
the world in the spring and the fruition of the world m 
the harvest; The winds born of its heat blow where they 
list and the silent forces of this a.tist give color to the 
world from the rainbow heptad to the pristine modest 
blush in the maiden's cheek. Red roses and white lilies 
owe their super-Solomon glory to the subtle life and tone 
color of the sun. Born aristocrat, center of the solar sys- 
tem, lord of the day and victor of the night, the sun hides 
itself in the germ cells of the seeds and comes forth in the 



70 Thk Poktry of 



resurrection and the life of vernal beauty. There is no 
spot too lowly and no place too foul for the healing of its 
wings. From the heart of a man to the cheek of a maid; 
from the heart of the sea to the heart of a gem, the same 
light and life and beauty. Fellow of publicans, friend of 
the sinner and king in the blouse of flame, this workman 
heat faints in the petals of the wood-violets and cleaves 
the earth with rivers. Science and Art combine in his 
handy work; morning becomes a Memnon-harp, running 
the chromatic scales of tone and color, and through him 
is the discovery of the treasury of the snow. From him 
is the growth that adds virtue to faith; knowledge to 
virtue, temperance to knowledge, patience to temperance, 
godliness to patience, brotherly kindness to godliness and 
love to brotherly kindness. This is the idea of the Christ 
as the Builder and His use of the spirit that giveth life. 

But this is not the only vision given of the Christ. Not 
only does His influence flow like the course of a living 
stream, "There is a river, the streams whereof shall make 
glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of 
the Most High'*, but He came not only to bring peace 
but a sword. John speaks of Him as having two baptisms 
where with he baptizeth, submergeth, one an immersion 
of the Spirit and one a baptism of fire. The one builds, 
the other destroys. The same psalmist who chanted his 
psalm to the measure of the river and its tributary streams 
going to the gladdening of the city of God, also said: 
**Come, behold the works of the Lord, what desolations 
he hath made in the earth**, and immediately forces us to 
the meaning that the desolations in the earth are the evils 



Sidney Lanier 71 



left desolate in order that good may be exalted; for he 
adds, **He maketh wars to cease unto the ends of the 
earth; he breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sun- 
der; he burneth the chariot in the fire." Lanier has a 
thorough picture in his mind of John's vision of the Christ 
potent to destroy the powers of evil where he says of Him, 
"Whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge 
his floor, and will gather the wheat into his garner; but 
the chaff he will burn with fire unquenchable", for he 
speaks of the sun as **Thou chemist of storms". In the 
two phrases then, "Whose fan is in his hand" and **Thou 
chemist of storms" is found the analysis of this part of 
the stanza. No destructive work, no seeming division of 
labor, however, can ever disturb the serenity of the 
"globed light". 

Now comes the personal, experimental application of 
the sun's power. "Old want" has not grown less but the 
change is in Lanier ; the kingdom of Heaven is within him. 
He comes in the genesis of the logic of the eighth chapter 
of Romans, "There is therefore now no condemnation to 
them that are in Christ Jesus". He has borne in his body 
the brand marks of the Son of God. The dawn of the 
perfect love has come upon him casting out all fear. Not 
only does he have the logic of Paul but with John the 
beloved apostle is an exponent of light. Not only does 
he say with John "This is the light that lighteth every 
man that cometh into the world", not only teach "That 
God is light and in him there is no darkness at all" but 
he also cries forth the new commandment to love one an- 
other "Because the darkness is past and the true light 



72 The Poetry oif 



now shineth". For **if we walk in the light as He is in 
the light we have fellowship one with another, and the 
blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin." 
^Vhen he says **I am lit with the sun", he means not 
only that the sun has been shining upon him but he has 
studied and learned the secret of its light. Edenic sun- 
shine; edenic evening; Abel's altar, Enoch's translation; 
Noah*s rainbow, Abraham's smoking furnace and burning 
lamp; Jacob's ladder and Joseph's dream; Moses' burn- 
ing bush and the pillar of cloud in the wilderness; Joshua's 
command o'er Gideon and Ajalon and Gideon's pitchers; 
Samson's blindness and the gleam of Ruth's sickle; the 
shadow in David's valley of death and the Shechinah in 
Solomon's temple of glory; the evils Ecclesiastes saw 
under the sun and She who looked forth as the morning 
in the canticles; Elijah's altar and chariot of fire; Elisha's 
counsel resulting in the ditches of Moab gleaming like 
blood in the sun and the prayer which opened the eyes of 
the servant on the mountain ; Isaiah's coal ; the cloud of in- 
folding fire disclosing the living creatures of Ezekiel's vis- 
ion, creatures of lambent, lamp-like flame, accompanied 
by the burning wheel studded with the fiery eyes, brooded 
over by the wings whose unfolding was as the waters 
lashed to storm in noise and whose eclosion was the glory 
of God, the "Manifold One; the brightness of the dream- 
image of Nebuchadnezzar; the glow of the fiery furnace 
upon the faces of the Hebrew children ; the shining of the 
Man of Daniel's vision by the river Hiddekel; the glint 
of the glittering sword in the words of the minor prophets 
together with the gleam of hope in their messages ; the light 



Sidne:y Lanier , "^^ 



to the Judean Shepherds, the storm-tossed apostles and the 
Roman soldiery at the Sepulcher, by night and to Stephen 
being stoned and Paul on the road to Damascus, by day; 
the fire on the island of Melita into which Paul shook 
the viper and the glow on the isle of Patmos where John 
saw the Lamb shining in the jewel-garnished walls, pearl 
gates and golden streets of the Holy City; all stars from 
the morning stars that sung together o'er creation's birth, 
Lucifer the fallen proud star of the morning, the 
stars that fought in their courses against Sisera, the 
star of Jacob, the sweet influences of the Pleiades, the 
bands of Orion, the star in the East and the twelve in the 
crown of the woman in heaven clothed with the sun; yea 
all light from the circling flame of rhe sword at the gates 
of Eden to the wandering stars for whom is reserved the 
blackness of darkness forever; from the time God said 
let there be light to the shimmering surface of the pure 
river of the water of life clear as crystal proceeding from 
out the throne of God and the Lamb, all lent their mes- 
sage and influence to this Southern Singer of Sunrise. Let 
Job and Samuel expiess his thought in the stanza; 

''He setteth an end to darkness, and searcheth out 
all perfection : the stones of darkness, and the shadoiv 
of death!' . . 

"And he shall he as the light of the morning, when 

the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds; as the 

tender grass springing out of the earth by clear shining 

after rain." 

With Paul, Lanier cries in the end of the stanza, "I am 

not ashamed of the gospel of Christ; for it is the power 

of God unto salvation to every one that believeth". 



74 The Poetry of 



Olljapter ^anttim 



j^ 



'Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear 
what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, 
we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is." 



''Oh, never the mast-high run of the seas 

Of traffic shall hide thee, 
Never the hell-colored smoke of the factories 

Hide thee, 
Never the reek of time's fen-politics 

Hide thee, 
And ever my heart through the night shall zvith know- 
ledge abide thee, 
And ever by day shall my spirit, as one that hath tried 
tried thee, 
,1 Labor, at leisure, in art, — till yonder beside thee 

'o My soul shall float, friend Sun, 

The day being done." 

^^F possession was the keynote of the last part of the 
a|I preceding stanza, assurance is the key note of this 
last stanza. Here is the jubilant climax of the 
eighth chapter of Romans. A climax based on the salva- 
tion through Christ, the regenration of the Holy Spirit, the 
Fatherhood of God, the restitution of paradise on earth, 
the resurrection of the dead, the promise of earthly help 
and heavenly glory, predestination, divine guidance, def- 
inite purpose, over-ruling conservation, assured victory, 
glorious consummation and omnipotent preservation 
through the double intercession of Son and Spirit. 



Sidney Lanier 75 



"Por I am persuaded^ that neither death, nor life, 
nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things 
present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor 
any other creature, shall he able to separate us from the 
love of God zvhich is in Christ Jesus our Lord.'' 

It is more than this it is the cHmax of the fifteenth chapter 
of First Corinthians: 

"Thanks be unto God who giveth us the victory 
through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore my beloved 
brethren, he ye steadfast, unmovable, ahvays abounding 
in the zvork of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that 
your labor is not in vain in the Lord." 

With it all, there is the thought in the last line. "He 
giveth His beloved. Sleep'*. 



76 The Poetry of 



Olljaptfr MtUm 



"Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the 
way, and while he opened to us the scriptures?" 



A FEW words will not be out of place in conclusion. 
There is a sadness in the realization of my inad- 
equacy to express "The thoughts that arise in me'* 
while reading and studying Lanier's poetry, but there is 
a gladness in having tried to express them for there has 
come a widening somehow to my vision and a newer light 
hangs over life. I have read Lanier's poetry and quoted 
it in the woods; it has led me at times to deeper prayer 
and at times to higher praise. Lanier has a message and 
the time should hear it. In the profoundest hours of the 
night I have laid the book down overcome by the sur- 
charged soul of this great and good man. I have found 
the beauty of holiness and the pierced hand in the lines 
written by him whose life was a struggle for breath. Here 
is the orthodoxy of belief but the glory of Heaven illum- 
inates it instead of the world's idea of the glow of Hell. 
Hell is not denied but Heaven is guaranteed. Christ re- 
ceives the glory and praise due unto Him. Sin is in the 
world but Christ has taken its captivity captive. How 
little of the present day literature is tensible for the ex- 
pression of spirituality such as is taught in the word of 
God; how few latter day poems capable of holding the 



Sidney Lanier 77 



intension of the open tomb of Christ! In days of specu- 
lative philosophies overshadowed by the beast-idea of de- 
velopment how refreshing to find the God-origin ringing 
true in sweetest measures of lovely poesy. There can be 
no earthly doubt of Lanier's genius and time will by its 
just process of elimination leave him standing in an exalted 
place in belles lettres, nay rather in the exalted place 
where with his peers the great singers of the world, his 
voice will lose nothing by any comparison. 

The time has past for some people to read Lanier be- 
cause he is Southern born and some to refrain from reading 
him for the same reason. The wind of the divine afflatus 
bloweth where it listeth and it has found the soul of 
Lanier. He is a great American poet, blending the song 
of the South into the song of the Nation and adding that 
in turn to the mighty harmony of the world. His song is 
not alone for the clerisy of poetry who have mind acumina- 
tion and soul actuation but is a song for the masses. He 
is still however the poet's poet and the preacher's poet. 
His music is bound to be heard and being dead he yet 
speaketh. 



MISSKNSfR J08 PIINTIN8 CO. 
OWENIIORO, KY. 



